SaaStr

A social community of 500,000+ SaaS founders and executives and over 3,000,000 views a month dedicated to sharing the best learnings, insights and practices around building and scaling SaaS businesses.  From nothing, to Initial Traction, to Initial Scale, and beyond.

Paying back and sharing key learnings (hard knock and otherwise) from going from $1m to $100m+ in SaaS.

Continuing to work on ways to do this bigger and more effectively than ever.

Puts on www.SaaStrAnnual.com and SaaStrEuropa.com for 15,000+ SaaS Founders.  PLEASE COME!! :)

#1 enterprise & SaaS blog / content / writer on Quora.

Trusted Advisor

Out of a $100,000,000+ venture fund, we lead $250k-$5m initial investments in great SaaS companies with founders that are Better Than Us.  Generally, with at Least 10 Unaffiliated Customers.

We've done some good ones, including leading the very first or very early VC investments in Algolia, Automile, Logikcull, Mixmax, Pipedrive, PlatoHQ, SalesLoft, Talkdesk, MaestroQA, HelloOffice, Gorgias.io, Mapistry, RevenueCat, Owner, Treasury Prime and others.  I also serve as an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, Front, Intercom, Greenhouse, Retention Science, Sqreen.io / Datadog, among other emerging leaders.

Investor & Founder Champion

Adobe Systems

Adobe Sign / EchoSign from Adobe is the leading 100% web-based e-signature and contract automation service with 1.1m customers and 16m users and used by 9/10 of the top leaders on the web, Facebook, Google, Pandora, Workday, Groupon, Twitter, LivingSocial, Yelp, Oracle, SAP, Coca-Cola, Dell, Citrix, VMWare, EMC, Taleo, Successfactors, Mastercard, you name it.

In March 2013, Adobe announced EchoSign and the Web Services business had hit $64,000,000 in ARR at Q1'13 and $140,000,000+ ARR by FYE'13, and $400,000,000 ARR by Q1'16.

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More than 95% of all documents that are digitally signed use the Adobe family of products:  Acrobat, Reader, LiveCycle, and since July 2011, #1 ranked EchoSign.  

And you can start using EchoSign for free from any browser.  http://www.echosign.com   #thepowerofadobe

Vice President, Web Business Services

Adobe Sign / EchoSign is the next great on-demand sales tool.  It is simply the fastest and easiest way to get contracts signed, tracked, and filed.  E-signature or fax signature.  Our 5,000,000 users and 50,000+ customers (including leaders such as Google, Facebook, Pandora, Groupon, American Express, Comcast, Aetna, Twitter, LivingSocial, BT, GE, Qualcomm, CIGNA, Dow Jones, P&G, American Express, Facebook, Dell, TimeWarner, Delta Airlines, Symantec, VMware, AOL, Citrix, Nationwide, UnitedHealthcare and many more) close deals on average in just 42 minutes using EchoSign.  Send, Sign, Done.  We're profitable, we're doing cool things -- and WE ARE HIRING!

Adobe Sign / EchoSign was acquired by Adobe in July 2011 and was backed by Emergence Capital, me, friends, and other investors.

Co-founder, ceo

NanoGram Devices Corp

At NanoGram Devices we pioneered using nanotechnology to dramatically enhance the performance of power sources for implantable medical devices.  NDC technology enables implantable defibrillators and pacemakers to last years longer -- saving lives.  NDC was acquired by the market leader for speciality power sources, Greatbatch Inc. (NYSE: GB) for ~$50,000,000.

NanoSVO was qualified for implantable use in 2007 and has since gone on to extend/save thousands of lives.

Served as VP, Corp Dev @ affiliate NeoPhotonics Corp

Co-Founder, President

NeoPhotonics

I was brought in by the CEO and the Board to investigate and commercialize new uses for the Company's technology at revenue zero.  Ultimately, I helped the CEO focus the core business on telecommunications and raise $30m in venture capital, and then licensed its nascent technology for implantable power sources, using that to start and co-found NanoGram Devices (see above).

NeoPhotonics has since gone on to a successful IPO on the NYSE and a multi-hundred million dollar revenue business.

Vice President, Strategic Development

BabyCenter

Since its founding, BabyCenter has been the leading destination on the Internet for new and expectant parents.  According to Alexa it is the 300th highest trafficked U.S. site on the 'net, dwarfing all competitors.  

Consumer Health Interactive; Johnson & Johnson; eToys

Sr. Director, Corporate Development

Helping, founding, funding, and growing B2B start-ups.  Making it a positive-sum game for everyone involved.

"Do or do not. There is no try."

Specialties: helping people grow and become their best.  doing not the impossible, but the unlikely.  never giving up.

Join us IRL at SaastrAnnual.com

A lot of folks on LinkedIn complain they are /were unpaid and overworked at startups

I get it and it may well be true

My one challenge is this: 

- Where do you think the money to pay even more comes from?  That $2m in ARR only goes so far.

- And be honest: should you even be working a startup at all?  There is always too much work and not enough cash.

The Age of 1,000 Unicorns corrupted everyone’s gut on where money comes from, and everyone is to blame here.  Our barometers of what things should cost, and what startups could pay, radically changed.  100x ARR rounds went into comp and expenses — that in most cases, didn’t really pencil out.

No one worried about sales inefficiency, and hot startups could pay much higher compensation than just a few years before.  

For a while.

But in the end, startups don’t have enough cash to go around, and can never pay what a Big Tech Co can in most cases.  Because the very, very best Big Tech Cos from Google to Facebook to Adobe just mint an insane amount of profits.  Even Salesforce is becoming highly profitable now.

Yes, there are toxic founders and selfish VCs and all of that.  Those stories are true.

But before you blame others too much for a rough experience, ask yourself if real startups are even for you … at all.

The comp will never be enough, and the hours will always be hard, or somewhat long, or both.  You’ll always be on the front-lines, and can rarely hide.  And again, the comp may not be that great really.

Startups really are only for Pirates and Romantics.

The rest probably should join something with at least 500 employees or more.

Jason M. Lemkin

I've been doing this long enough to know there is no karma

Folks do awful things and do just fine

But I've also been doing this long enough to know if you are really, really good to a lot of people

A few will really surprise you down the road and pay it back many times over

Unveiling the Right Time to Expand Your Product Line for Maximum Growth!

Startups are hard

Personally:

- My cofounder walked out the door
- I spent all the money
- I had to sign a $750k full-recourse note
- Our product failed at our top customer
- My VPS told my board I was incompetent
- My family didn't understand
- I went through recessions

Could have quit

"SaaStr Brings Together the Best of Cloud Computing"

We're ALMOST THERE!!  NEXT WEEK!!
Sep 6-8 in SF Bay!!
40+ Acre Campus
12,000+ of The Best in SaaS
800+ VCs
500+ Braindates and Sessions

And you!!

See.  You.  There!!

Crossed 9,000 attendees for SaaStrAnnual.com 2023 today!

Where will we end up?  Let's see!!

See everyone next week!!  Sep 6-8 in SF Bay!!

Founders never get “too senior” to do the actual work

They’ll always do it, Day 1 or Day 1000

This is often why we struggle with VPs that won’t.  And make mishires here.

We just assume they will.

The good news about joining a tiny startup is you will interface directly with the CEO on a regular basis

Sometimes even as a peer

The "bad" news is that CEO will hold you to a pretty darn high standard

Reasons I've lost money investing, or had mediocre outcome:

- founder wars
- CEO misled on metrics
- CEO ignored zero cash date

What didn't stop unicorn outcomes:

- one terrible year
- bigger competitors
- taking a long time

GET EXCITED!!!

SaaStrAnnual.com 2023 Kicks Off Tomorrow!!

Who's at 2023 SaaStrAnnual.com THIS WEEK W-Fri in SF Bay Area?  

CEO Monday
CEO Freshworks
CEO Amplitude
CEO Workiva
CPO Adobe 
CRO Gong 
CMO Datadog 
CMO Databricks 
CRO OpenAI 
CMO Harness 
VPE Okta 
COO Docebo 
CMO Lightspeed Commerce 
CRO Miro 
SVP PagerDuty 
CCO Asana  

And 12,000 more!!  

See.  You.  There!!

GET EXCITED!!  SaaStrAnnual.com  2023 starts TOMORROW!!

👉 10am early Braindates
👉 11am first workshops 
👉 12:30 lunch sessions kick off incl. me + @DavidSacks on "SaaS in 2024"

Come whenever works!

See. You.  There!

Ok we're almost there!!  SaaStrAnnual.com 2023 kicks off TOMORROW!!

Take a fun look back here at SaaStr Annual #001 in 2015 with CEO of Box, Slack, Rippling and more here

(SaaS was so, so much smaller then!)

So I’m seeing a quiet return of “solopreneurs” and consultants … to real, full-time roles

🤔 It’s hard to make real money selling courses.  How many do we need?

😓 It’s hard to make real money being a highish-priced consultant to startups.  They really only need so many.  The gigs dry up, unless you truly have a strong, current brand.

💲“Passive income” sounds wonderful … until you end up with not enough of it and too much energy managing those rental units.

Work-life balance is critical.  But maybe, sometimes, for some of us, the only way to achieve is it to do great things at work.

There are only so many shortcuts in life

Maybe the only real cheat code is just to do great things with other folks on a great journey.

Where you'll spend your time as CEO as you scale:

50% on Recruiting
50% on Customers & Prospects 

and

50% on All the Rest

Sales is always hard

SaaS is always hard

But there is a moment in time when your brand kicks in

When it gives you a real tailwind in sales, in marketing, in partnerships

Really lean in when you see it, feel it, and know it

I’m #hiring. Know anyone who might be interested?

View the open to hiring details of Jason M.

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3683093300/

Klaviyo's IPO tomorrow will be an ultimate yardstick for SaaS in 2023/2024 

Top growth, top margins, top founders, will cruise past $1B in ARR

Whatever multiple they end up trading at ...

You are almost certainly worth less

The One Must-Have Role in Technical Sales – Don't Make This Mistake!

The best VPs of Sales are always recruiting

This is why when you hire them, they always have at least 2 strong reps ready to join them

The best ones -- always

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